Runaways Vol. 3 #12Review

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The team deals with an unexpected death and some unwelcome visitors.

By Jesse Schedeen

Two issues into their run, Kathryn Immonen and Sara Pichelli have convinced me they can put the Runaways back on track. It's just a shame they had to resort to such extreme measures out of the gate. Issue #11 culminated in a shocking death that actually was shocking. It hit me harder than any event since the death of Gert back in the hallowed days of Brian K. Vaughan. All the same, part of me wishes they could have found a different opening hook. But what's done is done, and though life continues to get worse for the Runaways, the series is quickly becoming one of my favorites again.

That's all despite the fact that this issue largely involves the Runaways sitting around and talking. That might sound like a recipe for boredom, but it should be obvious by now that Immonen never plays to convention. The extended dialogue sequences allow her to poke and prod at the characters, exposing their flaws and generally examining how they work and don't work as a collective unit. Despite all their trials and adventures, Immonen makes it clear this is a group of kids who are still uncomfortable with one another on some very fundamental levels. I particularly enjoy her handling of Victor, who seems to be slipping further and further into loopy robot mode all the time. But really, there are no weak links here. Immonen displays a strong handle on the whole team, and her dialogue almost always manages to sparkle.

Pichelli too proves a very solid fit for the series. Her work is the closest we've come so far to a retun to the Adrian Alphona days, and that's certainly a good thing. Her pencils lend the book a slightly more manga-influenced look than most Marvel books, enough so that's it's impossible to dismiss this series as "just another superhero book". If Pichelli's work has a flaw, it's that some of her characters appear a bit too old to be teenagers. Nico in particularly has apparently swallowed some sort of Amazon growth hormone. That aside, the book is clean, sleek, and easy on the eyes.

You'll probably hear this from me a lot in the coming months, but Runaways deserves a second shot from anyone who has written the series off in the last year or two. Immonen and Pichelli are a breath of fresh air to a book that never should have grown stale in the first place.